“I feel like I’m going to heaven.” Tupac.
I never thought much about death when I was younger. Life was either one of two things: getting an education and trying to raise myself up from the pitfolds of material poverty, finding a partner to journey through life with, finding work to feed and house myself and seeing what there was, if anything, that I could give back to society. Any extras were certainly the result of pure sacrifice and a strange mix of luck, hard work and prayer. Pain there has been and there is but none so asphyxiating as the pain of seeing a loved one die.
Death never entered the picture with any real immediacy until several school mates began to pass away, one by one. It meant in most cases that time had flown, that the years had whisked by and that that adage “time waits for no man” now had more significance. The first tinges of grey give us a sense of our own mortality, our own frailties before the passage of time. But the deeper meaning of death and time caught me somewhat by surprise when my dad went to the other side, and then my grandmother and then her only sister, my dear aunt, all in the space of 7 brief months. The undertaker had said almost prophetically: death comes in threes. And though the death knell had not been sounded for me, it was as if my life, held tenuously up by a thread in the midst of the recession, had now come to a precipitous and sudden halt. Strange as it may sound, I should have been more prepared than this. I should not have ground to a halt as if the world had come to an end, as anticipated and awaited as that is nowadays. But I had to concede that I had entered my first real meaningful season of death.
We generally seem to go about our lives oblivious to our own mortality. We know it is going to happen but we do not prepare for the emotional impact on us. I first remember paying respect to the dead at primary school, where curiosity certainly overruled feeling. We were not forced to go to see the “deads” but it made more sense to do so, because Granny would always ask, “ did you stop by the church to pay your respect to Mr/Mrs. so and so?” Of course, she would be getting ready to head up the hill to attend the main service. She was one of these individuals who listened to the two early morning radio death notices every day and went to every single funeral within and outside of physical proximity until she died at 99.
As children, we went in groups, tiny tots, between 5 – 10 years old, in our petite school uniforms made by the next door neighbour, filing past coffins to peep at the dead human beings. The ritual meant little more in our limited understanding, than tip-toeing past coffins in churches and looking down onto the corpses as piously as innocence would allow, and then making our way home. We were only children and not expected to stay for the service. Yet, the sight of someone you knew in a coffin, eyes closed, eyelashes still and firm, face painted in an odd looking paste, dressed in their Sunday best, is a hard picture to remove from your memory.
What it did say was that you fit into a community that was present with you at your birth, sheltered and protected you as you grew and was with you to see you off into the afterlife. The sternest test of Barbadian community spirit is that capacity to bond through funerals, birth and weddings as the centerpieces of tradition and togetherness.
But how should knowing that I am going to die affect my attitude to life? Is there any-way that we can stem the emotional impacts? Well this seems to depend on what we believe happens after death and that, really is a larger than life discussion. One of the most interesting and natural things about being human, however is that we return to the earth – that the soul goes to heaven, that it does not, or where indeed does it go, if there is a soul ? Death they say is as natural as being born. Yet to be born is seen as triumph; to die is seen as tragedy or harmful to both dead and the living, out of which may come growth. There are many examples to prove that out of death or its threat may come much good.
Tupac Shakur famously and eloquently put into words some of his convictions about death and how he had grown from tragedy and mistakes when he felt that he was nearing the end, “A coward dies a thousand deaths, a soldier dies only once...I believe that everything that you do bad comes back to you. So everything that I do that’s bad, I’m going to suffer from it. But in my mind, I believe what I’m doing is right. So I feel like I’m going to heaven.” Tupac was prodigious not only for his rap art but his effortless poetic and honest thoughts on many subjects, including death. “And I hope I’m forgiven for Thug Livin when I die.” “My only fear of death is reincarnation heart of a solider with a brain to teach your whole nation.” “Oh Lord, help me change my ways, Show a little mercy on judgement day, It ain’t me I was raised this way, Never let em’ play me for a busta, Makin’ hell for a hustler.” I put the pistol by my head, and say a prayer. I see visions of me dead, Lord are you there?”
Some people depend on religious and spiritual strength to prepare for it, which cushions them from its shock and removes the fear of death. Martin Luther King as my friend Mrs. Walcott reminds me had seen the Promised Land. “I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I am not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” With a very different idea of death, Winston Churchill, who guided a whole continent to victory over Nazi Germany said, “I am ready to meet my maker, but whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”
But whatever we believe in, it is very hard to lose a good friend to either life or to death, and to know that all our reasoning, human strength and might cannot bring them back. There is some speculation by older people in Barbados, who are anticipating death, about who will put down whom first. Barbadians travel from the four corners of the earth to “put down” loved ones. In China in the Donghai region, like Barbados, the more people turn up at a funeral to pay respect, the more prestigious for the grieving family. In Barbados this might mean honour mixed with spectacle and curiosity depending on who the person is. It was not the same thing for King Dyal to die as it was for Prime Minister David Thompson. In Madagascar, there is a dance with the dead where mourners take the unsuspecting corpse over their shoulders and together they revel in the streets. In some rural villages in Brazil, the dead are buried outside the door since the soul is felt to be in closer proximity to the living. This coincidentally also happens in some parts of Jamaica. Culture and ritual often make little sense except in the hearts of the people who live them.
Death, it is said, is the depth of the measure of humans. Then life must surely be the measure of the potential to live our lives well for as long as possible. As this unknown author said, “No matter how hard death tries it can’t separate people from love. It can’t take away our memories either. In the end, life is stronger than death.” The mystery about it is that we can only know for certain once we reach the other side.
***
No comments:
Post a Comment